Jo Baker - A Country Road, a Tree

“Who else could it be?”

“But that’s the problem! That’s what I’m saying. It could be anyone. We’ll be sitting here waiting, and we’ll watch someone coming down the road and before you know it they’re here, and then maybe it turns out they’re not the contact, they’re the Gestapo.”

“Gestapo travel in packs, like — I don’t know, hyenas. They don’t ever go anywhere alone. He’ll be alone; just him himself.”

She nods at this, looking across the road towards the wide-open fields, the bare trees, the fading sky.

“I don’t like it here,” she says.

“It’s only for a little while.”

“Just being here looks suspicious. There’s nowhere to hide; nowhere to blend in.”

“That’s true. But we can’t just go. If we go we miss our contact and we don’t have any help at all.”

She rummages in her bag, pulls out a crumpled package, unfurls the paper wrapping. Two biscuits.

“That’s all that’s left?”

She nods.

He takes one. “Thank you.”

She leans in against him, clutching her own biscuit. He puts his arm around her. She shuffles closer. Elbows, shoulder-blades.

“I don’t like it,” she says. “Not one little bit.”

“You don’t have to like it. You just have to get through it.”

He feels the movement of her arm under his hand, and then her jaw against his chest as she bites and chews her biscuit. His turns to powder in his mouth, and then to glue. He swallows, and then takes another bite.

“I’m tired,” she says stickily.

“Then go to sleep.”

“What if he comes?”

“He won’t.”

“Don’t be facetious.”

“If he comes, I’ll wake you. If I’m asleep too, he’ll wake us. You won’t miss out on anything, I promise you, by sleeping, so have a sleep. But put your socks back on first though, or you’ll get chilblains.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“We’ve nothing to drink. Do you want a sucking stone?”

“No.”

Suzanne shuffles around, wraps her coat around her and curls on to her side. Above the open fields, the starlings wheel and turn and cry. For a moment, they settle in the trees, and then by some unfathomable assent they lift shrieking into the air again. He sings, softly, in German:

Nun merk’ ich erst, wie müd’ ich bin

Da ich zur Ruh’ mich lege

She shuffles irritably. “Huh?”

“Schubert,” he says. “Rast.”

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Shut up.”

The song sings on in his head. After a while her breathing changes. He unbuckles his bag and drags out his spare sweater. He drapes it over her. The moon rises. He considers it. Closes his eyes and summons up an image: Caspar Friedrich’s Two Men Contemplating the Moon. The slumped tree, bare of leaves, its furred roots exposed as it slowly sinks towards the earth. Massive rocks, parched grass; in the sky a white disc misty, radiant. The two figures, stick-supported, lean on each other. The ancient moon, the ancient rocks, the failing dying ancient tree. The men for just a moment paused to look, to see, as if to give all this meaningless nature meaning.

He finds, in his pocket, that little pebble from the beach at Greystones. He tucks it into his mouth and sucks on it, and the hard thing brings water there.

—

The cold wakes him. His eyes open on to blackness and he can’t make sense of it. Then he sees the stars. He feels the press of the earth against him, pushing at his heels, heaving up against his shoulder-blades. His fingers twine into the cold grass, his nails dig into the ground; he is clinging on at the spin of it, the stars hurtling past, the giddy distances, the sick rush of a fairground ride, sticking him flat-backed against this cold earth. Then it thuds right into him: time, the present moment, here. He sits up, drops the stone from his mouth into his palm and retches.

“Is that you?” she asks.

He spits, swallows. “Usually.”

She fumbles for him in the darkness; her hand is cold on cold skin, the wire and gristle of his arm. She sits up beside him.

“Is he here?” she asks. “Did he come?”

They sit, side by side, stiff, dew-damp and cold. The sky is faintly light now. The slight tree is silhouetted against the blue.

He says, “I don’t think he did.”

After a while, she asks, “What time is it?”

He lifts his wrist and peers, but can’t make out the hands. He lifts it to his ear and hears it ticking. She shuffles closer, hungry for warmth. He slips his sucking stone back into his pocket and plants a blind, awkward kiss — it lands on unwashed, dirty hair.

“What’ll we do?”

“We’ll go back to that hayrick, try to sleep through the day.”

He feels the movement as she nods.

“We’ll be all right there. No one will be needing any hay yet.”

She sniffs.

“And then Monsieur will surely come tomorrow.”

“It’s tomorrow now.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It can’t go on like this for ever,” he says.

“No. We’ll get to Roussillon,” she says.

After a moment, he says, “I think it’s getting lighter.”

She twists to see the paling sky behind her.

“We’ll pass that field again,” she says. “We can get some of those carrots. You liked the carrots.”

“They were better than the turnips.”

“In a little while.”

“Yes.”

“When there’s light enough to see by.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll go then.”

“Yes. Time enough till then.”

And then there’s a sound.

“Hush.”

Footfalls. Movement in the hedge shadows. Skin bristles.

“Is it you?” he calls out into the darkness. “Hello there! Is that you, Monsieur?”

The figure stands against the pre-dawn sky. He’s just a boy. His socks are crumpled down and his jacket is too big for him. He glances off along the lane. He says, “Come with me.”

Figures stumble out of the shaft of daylight and into darkness, blinded by the difference. The door falls shut behind them and they confer in unself-conscious voices, oblivious to the company.

“I can’t see a thing. Is that you, Sylvie?”

“It’s Agnès, Pascale. Here, take my hand.”

He clears his throat out of politeness. They freeze, fall silent, peer ineffectually around.

Then Suzanne says, “Good day.” And they soften at the sound of a woman’s voice, return the greeting uncertainly.

When he and Suzanne were led to the barn, it was barely morning; their eyes had less of an adjustment to make. The boy sloped off again before they could thank him. They saw the old fellow sleeping in the straw, who stirred and muttered but didn’t wake. Later, they were joined by two young men, who were anxious and taciturn and who huddled down in one of the milking stalls and talked only to each other; and then a middle-aged countrywoman, who took a seat on a hay bale, set her basket on her knee, leant back against the bare stone wall and promptly fell asleep. He wondered did the boy bring them, slipping away each time to find someone else before he could be glimpsed?

By now the two of them feel like old lags, and that it is the done thing to welcome newcomers and put them at their ease.

“All’s well,” Suzanne says, getting up and limping towards the young women. “Come in, get comfortable.”

They settle down on bundled fodder. Clothes rustling, coats unbuttoned, bags dropped. And shoelaces stripped; the easing-off of shoes. War, it turns out, is dreadfully hard on the feet.

“You’ll never get your shoes back on again, Pascale.”

“Good. They’re evil. I hate them. I’ll walk barefoot to Avignon if I have to.”